When Jeff Bezos was the world’s richest man for a few hours

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos had a short stint as the world’s richest man on Thursday when a 1 percent jump early in the day in the shares of Amazon.com helped him surpass the wealth of Bill Gates. Unfortunately, the company’s shares cooled slightly later in the day allowing Gates to regain the mantle.

According to a real-time list of billionaires by Forbes, Bezos fortune grew to $90.6 billion, compared to Gates’ $90 billion on the back of surging stock giving him a few hours at the top position.

According to a filing with securities regulators in April, Mr. Bezos holds nearly 81 million shares of Amazon — almost 17 percent of the company. Gates has been at the top of the Forbes list of billionaires for 18 of the last 23 years. Besides Bezos, only two others have ever been able to pip Gates for short intervals. First is Carlos Slim of Mexico, who was the richest man between 2010 and 2012, and the other is Warren Buffett, who was the richest in 2008.

Amazon also reported its second quarter earnings yesterday, posting a profit of just $197 million on strong sales of $38 billion. The dip in profit, a drop of 77 percent from $857 million last year, is mainly due to Amazon’s aggressive investments in its own business.